Dorothy Canfield Fisher (February 17, 1879 – November 9, 1958) was an educational reformer, social activist, and best-selling American author in the early decades of the twentieth century. She strongly supported women's rights, racial equality, and lifelong education. Eleanor Roosevelt named her[when?] one of the ten most influential women in the United States.[1] In addition to bringing the Montessori method of child-rearing to the U.S., she presided over the country's first adult education program and shaped literary tastes by serving as a member of the Book of the Month Club selection committee from 1925 to 1951.

Contents

A quotation of Canfield Fisher in the Vermont State House Hall of Inscriptions interprets the state motto "Freedom and Unity" regarding the relation between individual freedom and the needs of the community.

She married John Redwood Fisher in 1907, and they had two children, a daughter, Sally, and a son, Jimmy.[3]

In 1911 Canfield Fisher visited the "children's houses" in Rome established by Maria Montessori. Much impressed, she took up the cause of bringing the method back to America, translating Montessori's book into English and writing five of her own: three nonfiction and two novels.[1]

Another concern of Canfield Fisher was her war work. She followed her husband to France in 1916 during World War I and while raising her young children in Paris worked to establish a Braille press for blinded veterans.[1] She also established a convalescent home for refugee French children from the invaded areas; continuing her relief work after the war, she earned citations of appreciation from Eleanor Roosevelt, Madame Chiang Kai-shek, and the government of Denmark.[3]

Canfield Fisher engaged in social activism in many aspects of education and politics. She managed America's first adult education program. She did war-relief work in 1917 in France, establishing the Bidart Home for Children for refugees and organizing an effort to print books in Braille for blinded combat veterans. In 1919, she was appointed to the State Board of Education of Vermont to help improve rural public education. She spent years promoting education and rehabilitation/reform in prisons, especially women's prisons.

After the war, she was the head of the U.S. committee that led to the pardoning of conscientious objectors in 1921, and sponsored financial and emigration assistance to Jewish educators, professionals, and intellectuals.

After her son was killed in World War II, she arranged a fellowship at Harvard Medical School for the two Philippine surgeons who tried to save his life.

Canfield Fisher spoke five languages fluently, and in addition to writing novels, short stories, memoirs, and educational works, she wrote extensively as a literary critic and translator. For tax purposes, her novels were written as "Canfield," her non-fiction as "Fisher."[1]

Her best-known work today is probably Understood Betsy, a children's book about a little orphaned girl who is sent to live with her cousins in Vermont. Though the book can be read purely for pleasure, it also describes a schoolhouse which is run much in the style of the Montessori method.[1] In all, she wrote 22 novels and 18 works of non-fiction.[5]

Sally was born in 1909.[3] When her mother died in 1958, Mrs. John Paul Scott lived in Bar Harbor, Maine, and had written 18 children's books as Sally Scott.[a] Canfield Fisher's granddaughter Vivian Scott was also writing children's books[9] and at least one had been published, evidently.[a]

Battalion Surgeon Captain James Fisher with his comrades in the Philippines during World War II.

James (Jimmy) was born in 1913[3] and became a surgeon and captain in the U.S. Army during World War II. He served with the Alamo Scouts for three months at the end of 1944, following which he was attached to a Ranger unit which carried out the raid to free POWs imprisoned at Cabanatuan in the Philippines.

The raid at Cabanatuan was a great success, with the Rangers suffering only two fatalities. Captain Fisher was one, mortally wounded by a mortar shell. As he lay dying the next day, his last words were "Did we get them all out?"[citation needed] He died on Luzon, January 11, 1945.[9]

^ abSee Sally Scott at Library of Congress Authorities, with 25 catalog records. Unfortunately Sally Scott is not identified, or authorized in the sense of authority control, by the Library. The name is partly undifferentiated; the 25 hits may be records of works created by more than one Sally Scott. Evidently they are 21 US publications 1943–1963 created by writer Sally Scott and an illustrator (16 with Beth Krush); 4 UK publications 1981–1987 created by writer-illustrator Sally Scott, one with another writer.
See also Works by or about Sally Scott in libraries (WorldCat catalog). Evidently the first-listed work is by another Sally Scott.
Vivian Scott is another undifferentiated name, credited by 3 records in the catalog as of February 2015. One of them is for a children's picture book presumably created by Fisher's daughter Vivian Scott: The Potted Witch (Harcourt, 1957).[1]